04/14/04
I Am Tehuticus! No, *I* Am Tehuticus!

This is a vague little dream I had while dozing on the couch. It lasted only a few minutes, and I don't remember it well, but at least it's something.

For some reason I had gone to Google to look up...something. Somehow I got the link to my Diaryland diary (tehuti.diaryland.com), I think, only in my dream I believe my username was tehuti_88 or tehuti88 (another variation of my username that I use when "tehuti" is already taken). There were some results but I think then I wanted to view more, maybe to see if I was linked to from anyone else's page. I think I'm starting to remember this now...what happened was, as it always does, Google brought up a listing of different results for "tehuti" from Diaryland, and that included my diary (which as I said was tehuti_88 or tehuti88 in the dream), as well as others that had "tehuti" in their names. Google does not really work this way, as it only displays THAT particular search term and no variations of it; but it worked this way in my dream.

I noticed one of the "More results" from my search led to something like tehuti99.diaryland.com. This puzzled me. I think it also gave the first line of text from the page or the title of the page or both, and...okay, now I remember this too. What REALLY caught my eye on the page was an emoticon I frequently use, known as the "anime smile": ^_^ This was displayed in the title of the page, I believe, following a short title itself; I can't remember the specific title but it was a bunch of words all smushed together into one run-on word, something like "readthisentryplease ^_^ " (The anime smile itself was not part of the run-on word.) That's not what the line actually said, but it was something like that, some sort of request for attention. I feel that the title given was of a specific entry rather than the title of the entire diary itself. (On Diaryland in real life, all my entries have the same title at the top of the page--"Skew: 'Negatory! Negatory! Will Robinson!'"--and it's not the title of any of the entries themselves.)

But like I said, it was the smiley that caught my eye first, as I use that frequently in my own journal. Then I saw the username tehuti99 (or tehuti_99). My first thought was, "What the heck...?" The anime smiley in connection with the name "Tehuti" was odd enough...but the username "tehuti99," almost exactly mimicking mine of "tehuti88"...that seemed like more than a coincidence.

I clicked the result to see where it would take me. It took me, rather than to the diary itself, to the profile of that user...but then instead of taking me there I think it shuttled me through to a specific entry or something; I'm not sure, I just know that I didn't end up on the page I intended to, and at some point it forwarded me to a different page. I might have tried to click back to see what I missed but I don't know if it worked. In any case, at some point I ended up at tehuti99's diary, then I clicked through to a newer or updated version which was located at Diary-X.com. (I have a diary there as well.) I don't recall specifics but I get the feeling that tehuti99 had stopped updating their Diaryland diary so I went to view the other one.

By now I was growing suspicious that this "tehuti99" was a parody account set up to mock me. I'm often rather histrionic and emotional in my journal, and I've dealt with online trolls and stalkers before, so why should this be anything different? I've made it obvious lately that I'm upset that very few people read my online journal, and this webpage seemed to be mocking that. It was just too much of a coincidence to overlook. The "99" was a direct takeoff of my "88"--just one digit higher. Even without having seen the journal itself I was beginning to grow angry and hurt. Didn't people have better things to do than mock shy people like myself?

Well, I somehow finally reached tehuti99's Diary-X diary. I think the background was kind of pale lavenderish-pink or some such, light colored. The entry text itself seemed confined to the middle of the screen as if it were in a scrollbox of some sort, very small with wide plain margins on all sides; no fancy decoration or layout aside from the scrollbox. There was more than just the entry, like links and an image and information and such, and it all seemed very cramped and hard to see without scrolling through this little box; very inconvenient. I thought, "If somebody's going to parody me, you think they'd at least make it readable." For a harasser, they sure made it difficult to read their harassment!

I tried looking at the contact and personal information closer to the bottom of the page first to see if this really was a parody of me. I think it DID include some details that looked as if they were taken from my own bio information, but I don't recall specifics. I seem to remember that when I looked at one of the entries, instead of being text on the page, it looked more like scrawled children's writing on a lined piece of paper, like an image. Maybe it was a special font or something. I browsed over it and I think it was written in an excessively childish style, and I think it might have said something about wanting people to read the diary, so I believed that it WAS intended to make fun of my own journal, though again, I don't remember exactly what it said. All I know is that even though this was an attempt to insult me, even oversensitive me felt that they hadn't done a really great job of being REALLY obnoxious. I almost got the feeling that they'd started out with the true intention of parodying me, yet had lost interest early on and now this was it. o_o How lame. I believe I was almost DISAPPOINTED that they did such a lousy job of parodying me! I have certainly dealt with much more sophisticated stalkers.

I forgot something earlier; I think this Diary-X version of the tehuti99 diary contained the same entries as the Diaryland version, they had just been copied over to the new site and maybe added to; I'm not sure. Also perhaps this "tehuti99" had started out as purely a parody diary yet I got the feeling they were a real user and maybe when they lost interest in making fun of me (if they had), then they either got caught up in their new persona of "tehuti99" or started posting just regular entries, and that was why they were not so offensive anymore. Not positive, but I get that feeling.

I strongly think this dream was influenced by real life as the day before I had looked at someone else's personal diary, no longer updated, at Diaryland, then at their duplicate, up-to-date diary at Diary-X, and the second diary did have a layout similar to the one I described above, with a small scrollbox in the middle of the page. (It was not lavenderish colored though; I think it was white.) This diarist has me listed as a favorite and I was curious about one of their entries which MIGHT have anonymously alluded to me in one paragraph, though I could not be sure. (The reference was not offensive.) This incident stuck with me as they are someone who used to write to me positively about my fiction, yet they abruptly stopped, so I had assumed they lost interest in me; so of course whether they meant me in their entry or not has been weighing on my mind, as I can't understand why they would write about me when they appear to have lost all interest in me personally and they do not contact me anymore.



2004 Dreams
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